“We don’t know how much Apple paid for the several-person team it acquired very recently,” Lessin reports. “But we heard from people knowledgeable about the deal that the company plans to directly integrate Embark’s technology into Apple Maps.”

Lessin reports, “Embark, founded in 2011, builds apps for mobile devices powered by Android and Apple’s iOS with information about transit systems in about half a dozen U.S. cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Its iOS apps are still available for download, but its Android apps aren’t, according to our checks. An Apple spokeswoman confirmed the deal and said ‘Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.'”

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18 Comments

I wonder if there will be a “new” Apple Maps in iOS 7. It looks from the demos I’ve seen that there may be. And I wonder how good it will have to be to put down once and for all the criticism of the original Maps app. Very, very good, I would think… and hope.

I still think it was a mistake to have fired Scott Forstall. Now I have to live with the shitty iOS 7 icons for God knows long until Cook comes to his senses and fires the entire iOS 7 design team for churning out crap on a level that exceeds the maps disaster.

Yeah, icons that don’t please 100% of iOS users is definitely on the same level of Mapgate hyperbole.. oh wait.. gahhh.. Honestly, I couldn’t care less what the app icons look like when the underlying functionality of iOS leaves me in awe everytime I use it.. BTW have you used the iOS 7 beta?

I couldn’t agree more. Same old MDN gripe about the initial release of Apple Maps. It happened. It was way overblown. Even the flawed initial version of Apple Maps served its purpose in terms of forcing Google to update its iOS maps app. Apple will continue to update Apple Maps and its humble and not so illustrious beginnings will fade into history.

Tech website The Verge is reporting that in addition to acquiring Embark, Apple may also have acquired crowdsourced mapping tool Locationary. Apple recently acquired another mapping company, HopStop. These small acquisitions have a history of paying off nicely for Apple. Story link:

MDN chill. All apple needs to do is come up with Maps 2.0 , a slight redesign of the interface a few things here and there and relaunch. Apple maps is allready much better than googles interface. It just needs more data. The “harm” is much less than people think. People just want the best software. No matter who makes it or when.

I like Apple’s Maps back home in NYC, but as an American traveler in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, , I find Google’s Maps much more useful. Apple’s Maps displays all text in cyrillic, whereas Google’s Maps displays most labels in the Roman alphabet. Google’s Maps show a lot more buildings, businesses, markets and other points of interest. And, GM’s greater visual contrast makes it easier to read.

It’d be great if these maps apps would let us choose the default language and/or writing system for displaying text labels.